The FINANCIAL — To date, China is the second largest country-importer of Ukrainian sunflower oil (after India), which share covers nearly 13-14% of the shipment volumes from Ukraine, declared a representative of Agritel International, Mikhail Ponomarenko during his report at the second international Sunflower Oil Summit: Science & Industry in Odessa, on July 11.
China is a very important trading partner of Ukraine, because it takes a significant share in the global structure of agricultural imports. Therefore, China has rather strong influence on the export prices formation for sunflower oil, and any negative changes in the Chinese economy, such as national currency fluctuations or declining of the GDP growth, will immediately impact on the price, the expert noted.
In particular, the increasing purchasing power of the population and, as a result, the desire to buy more expensive and less harmful products, caused the significant growth of the Chinese imports of sunflower oil in recent years.
During 10 recent years, China decreased the consumption of palm oil by 11%, while the figures for sunflower grew by 375%. Of course, the quantitative changes are not so significant, and they totaled nearly +0.9 mln tonnes only, but the market expects that in 2017/18 MY China will import almost 1 mln tonnes of sunflower oil, the speaker said.
Also, M.Ponomarenko added that in the short term the Chinese import demand should grow for all products, including sunflower oil, taking into account the current weakening of USD/CNY rates, and increasing of the Chinese GDP rates in the first quarter of 2017. In terms of the growing competition rates and large carry-over stocks of sunflower oil in countries of the Black Sea region, the imports to China will support the global prices in a new season.
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